Racing Roundup | Ice Cream Silence by a neck

Edges Sisterhood in Doubledogdare

Apr. 20, 2013

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From special dispatches

Ice Cream Silence held off a late charge from Sisterhood to win the 19th running of the $100,000 Hilliard Lyons Doubledogdare Stakes, a Grade III stakes for fillies and mares, by a neck with Rosie Napravnik on Friday at Keeneland. Favorite Mystical Star finished fourth, behind show horse Aertemus Kitten.

The G. Watts Humphrey Jr. homebred, trained by Rusty Arnold, covered the 11/16 miles on Polytrack in 1:44.66. It was the second victory in the Doubledogdare for Arnold, who won the race in 1998 with Top Secret.

Ice Cream Silence, $19.80, is a 4-year-old daughter of Street Sense out of the Seeking the Gold mare Double Scoop. The victory, before a crowd of 11,897 on a brisk afternoon, was worth $60,000 and improved Ice Cream Silence’s earnings to $211,460.

• Hall of Fame trainer dies: Retired Hall of Fame trainer Thomas J. Kelly died Friday morning in Hialeah, Fla., after a brief illness, according to his son, Timothy D. Kelly. He was 93.

Kelly and his brother Eddie began working at Maryland racetracks while in their teens. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II — earning two Purple Hearts — Kelly returned to the racetrack and took out his trainer’s license in 1945.

For the next 54 years, until his retirement in 1998, Kelly conditioned 65 stakes winners, including Plugged Nickle, 1980’s champion sprinter who won that year’s Grade I Wood Memorial at Aqueduct Racetrack, and Droll Role, a top performer on dirt and grass who won the 1972 Canadian International at Woodbine and the Washington, D.C. International at Laurel Park.

Kelly was also responsible for launching the career of famed jockey Bill Hartack, whose contract he purchased from a West Virginia trainer in 1954.